Contents

Story

The radio series follows the plot of the second edition very closely, except for the addition of The Tale Bearer, a narrator whose account of the story is often interrupted and embellished by the protagonist Bilbo Baggins in the role of secondary narrator.

Bilbo, a stay-at-home hobbit, is approached by the wizardGandalf to undertake a dangerous adventure, and despite his initial reluctance he soon finds himself accompanying Thorin Oakenshield and his party of dwarves on a long and difficult quest to recover the dwarves' treasure from Smaug the dragon, encountering trolls, goblins, Gollum (acquiring a magic ring near Gollum's cave), wargs, eagles, giant spiders, elves and men along the way. In the process Bilbo is transformed from a clumsy, timid and rather comic figure into a dignified and occasionally heroic everyman.

Influences from The Lord of the Rings

Although the script is closely based on the original novel, Kilgariff incorporates a few names and phrases from The Lord of the Rings that did not originally appear in The Hobbit.

In an early scene at Bag End, Gandalf originally tells Bilbo, "Great elephants, you're not at all yourself today". In the radio version this is changed to "Great oliphaunts", the form used in The Lord of the Rings.

After killing the Great Goblin, Gandalf makes a light by saying the spell Naur an edraith ammen.

At the beginning of the Battle of Five Armies Gandalf says, "Upon victory depends not just the treasure, nor only our lives, but the whole future and well-being of Middle-earth". The name Middle-earth is not used at all in the original novel.

During the battle the Elvenking uses his name, Thranduil, as a battle-cry.

The music is composed by David Cain and performed by David Munrow with The Early Music Consort.

Production

The show's production was complicated by the inclusion of multiple sound effects (often inserted live while recording the actors' performances), songs from the novel, and special sounds and electronic voice treatments created by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. All of the trolls, elves, goblins, wargs and eagles have treated voices, as does Gandalf when imitating the trolls.

Wiping and recovery

The original master tapes for the series seem to have been wiped sometime during the 1970s. The reason is not clear, although it was rumoured to be due to a dispute with the Tolkien estate (if so, the subsequent recovery and commercial issue of the series proves that the dispute was resolved).

The BBC eventually recovered the series from a domestic off-air FM recording, apparently comprising 90- and 60-minute compilations edited together from the original episodes. The sound quality of these recordings is clear and legible, though it is noticeably inferior to a studio-quality recording and exhibits prominent tape hiss.

For broadcast and home audio purposes the BBC re-edited these compilations back into half-hour episodes, adding a brief snatch of the theme tune at the beginning and end of each. The title The Hobbit is spoken only at the beginning of the first episode and there are no opening or closing credits. It is quite likely that the credits were never included in the episodes themselves, but would originally have been read by a continuity announcer at the end of each episode.

Audio release and reference

There have been several home audio releases of the series on cassette and CD. The 1997 CD release includes a bonus CD containing 9 minutes and 45 seconds of additional music in stereo, which evidently was taken from an unwiped master tape. The 1997 set also contains a "Personal Memoir" by series producer John Powell, from which some of the information in this article is derived.